a perspective on the BOOing

"I had a perspective on the booing."

Bob Dylan said that in "No Direction Home" (documentary by Martin Scorsese).
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A big -- THING -- in the early years of his career was mid-sixties when he got an electric band and performed & recorded with them.
It was controversial with his fans.
People got real excited and upset about it.
Some audience members at Newport Folk Festival, 1965 walked out on his performance, or "booed" or both. Audiences had mixed reactions to Electric Dylan as late as 1966 (there's a double album from that tour -- London).
One ticked-off Brit says, "I came to see a flippin' folk singer, not electric pop music."

We listen, today, and it's like --
"Blowin' in the Wind" on acoustic guitar -- great!
"Maggie's Farm" on electric guitar with band -- great!
It's Dylan!
Whatever!

But back then his "folk" fans had a whole entrenched position / opinion about the parameters of folk music, and THAT was what they were swept away by, and THAT was what they paid to hear and wanted to hear.

I love electric "Maggie's Farm" but I guess for fans in a certain mind-set -- and of course they LOVED Dylan, so if you love something, or somebody, the disappointment is that much more painful if things don't shake out well, or the way you thought...for those Folk Fans, who were Serious in their love of the music, hearing "Maggie's Farm" electric when they were primed for "Blowing in the Wind" acoustic might have been somewhat like ordering salad and being served lasagne.
Or maybe being hit on the head with a lasagne.

Playing electric was perceived as "rock and roll" rather than "folk."
And "rock and roll" was perceived, by these particular audiences, as "going commercial."

"Depraved" -- Joan Baez's description.
Maria Muldauer: "The volume of the blues band was kinda wild; you couldn't get the words too clearly."
Peter Yarrow: "It was so loud -- you could not have the intimacy that we had enjoyed with folk music."
Pete Seeger says, all these years later, "It's impossible to get all the words, when you've got those electric instruments going! You could not understand the words!"
And this gentle, now very old folk singer says, with desperate enthusiasm mixed with frustration, "If I had an axe I'd chop the mike cable right now - !"

Trying to save Dylan from his own music.
The "axe" statement spiraled around into rumor / blown out of proportion, just like in any situation the story gets bigger, the more different people hear it and repeat it.

"I understand Pete Seeger had an axe and was going to cut the cable."
"Pete Seeger had gone to get an axe."
Dylan: (shocked, and in pain) -- "I heard Pete Seeger had been going to cut the cable -- It didn't make sense to me -- someone whose music I cherish -- Ooh! It was like a dagger! The thought of it made me want to go out and get drunk."
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After Newport, Bob Dylan and The Band played at Forest Hills & by then, Dylan says, "The booing didn't -- I wasn't -- I had a perspective on the booing. Because -- uh -- you gotta realize, you can kill somebody with kindness, too."

Still, at Newport somebody had to grab the mike, after their electric set, and tell the audience, "OK everybody calm down! Bob's gone to get his acoustic guitar!"
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[quote] "When people...ask me how I can possibly operate in the current political environment, with all the negative campaigning and personal attacks, I may mention Nelson Mandela, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, or some guy in a Chinese or Egyptian prison somewhere. In truth, being called names is not such a bad deal."
---------------------- [end quote]

[From The Audacity of Hope, by Barack

Obama, CopyR. 2006, Random

House, New York.]

Let's hear it for

perspective.

-30-